Today is a good day for reflecting. I was going to write a wildly sympathetic post to everyone in the US because you’re in such a difficult position. Bushfires and a new president and… so many things. But then I read the Australian news and we have turned into bigot-central and I belong to one of the groups that the bigots enjoy attacking.
I sometimes get angry. I sometimes rant. I often analyse what’s going on. But today… today I think we all deserve a break.
I’m going to find you a couples of poems to give us all that moment of peace in a difficult world.
The first is one of my favourites. I am Australian. No number of people telling me that Jews cannot be Australian can convince me otherwise. Modern Australian, but Australian. This is our iconic poem expressing this, read by the author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86TKK81EwJ4 Dorothea MacKellar lived from 1885 to 1968 . Her accent is very close to that of my father’s first cousin, who was born in the late nineteenth century and died in the twenty-first. This is one of the reasons it’s one of my heart-poems. I loved Linda very much, and still miss her, twenty years on.
If you read the last paragraph without due thought, you might think that I myself am nearing one hundred years of age. I am not. However, Australia has a particular sense of humour and… I am Australian. I am sorely tempted to give you a link to our latest lamb ad to justify everything I’ve written in this paragraph. This is not the moment of quiet contemplation I had intended, nor a statement of national identity… but it is the annual lamb ad, which is of significant cultural importance. Each and every year I say this to someone. Here is the new advertisement, so that you can decide for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75BAUXZyWw0
Clearly I am not going in the direction of quiet contemplation. It appears that what I really meant, was that we should take a break from bleakness in whatever way we need. I would love anyone reading this to share your favourite poems and your favourite advertisements (the funny ones). If you don’t, I might have to find lamb ads from other years. I need more poetry and I need more silly ads. I’d rather learn the ones you love than revisit ones I already know.
PS The lamb ads are an annual thing. And they’re always, always funny and just a little thoughtful.
PPS Normally I share Paul Verlaine poems, because I love his work so very much. The thing is that Jewish Australians are being told that we don’t belong here, so another type of beloved poem was appropriate. I am facing hate with poetry this week.
Ah—the annual lamb ad. Thank you for this. I thought last year’s was funny, but this one made me guffaw out loud (not necessarily a frequent occurrence with me these days . . . ).
Rebecca Shaw’s latest article in The Guardian (“I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers”) helped lighten the mood, but this ad was icing on the much-needed cake of solace.
Sigh. If only we could truly laugh our way out of the world’s problems . . .
I’ve been trying to think of a soothing poem for the times, but Philip Larkin’s “This Be The Verse” keeps popping up in my mind instead. I think I’ll have to re-immerse myself in Dionne Brand’s collection “The Blue Clerk” in order to recapture the possibility of beauty enshrouded in disquieting words.
We need laughter. And lamb ads.
Finding poetry is more difficult. I suspect I chose what I chose because of all the recent “You are not Australian” comments. Now I want to see if I am remembering correctly and if Peter Dawson did indeed record a musical version of it. Or I could just stick with his “Clancy of the Overflow.” There’s a safety in that poem, too. We could all simply be Clancy…
Guess what I found… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA54gbxzvzE
Ha—the internet has everything!
I suspect, though, that Clancy’s life wasn’t nearly as idyllic as the poem’s narrator imagined. Mind, I could get behind lying out in the open on a moonless night and staring up at the unobscured stars. I haven’t seen the milky way properly in years.
Clancy’s life was tough. Paterson knew this. Bit the poem is about nostalgia and escape, not reality
The lamb ad was exactly what I needed this morning. Thank you!